Despite international media attention and considerable diplomatic pressure from the Netherlands, Israel did not allow the general director of the Palestinian organization Al-Haq, Shawan Jabarin, to travel to the Netherlands to receive the prestigious Dutch Geuzenpenning award for human rights defenders on 13 March 2009. Israel's travel ban on Jabarin and other human rights defenders on the basis of secret evidence violates principles for a fair trial and the basic human right of free movement, resembling the behavior of the apartheid regime in South Africa.Al-Haq is an independent, Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. The Geuzenpenning honors the historic resistance group, the Geuzen, who fought the occupying German army in the Netherlands during the Second World War. The Geuzenpenning award keeps alive the ideals of resisting oppression and promoting and maintaining democracy as well as heightening awareness in the Netherlands and globally of all forms of dictatorship, discrimination and racism. The Israeli government has forbidden Shawan Jabarin from traveling abroad ever since he was appointed director of Al-Haq in 2006. Before his appointment, Jabarin traveled to many countries, including Ireland, where he received a master's degree in human rights in 2005. The Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen reportedly put a lot of pressure on his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni, though clearly to no avail. In a hearing before the Israeli high court that violated several universal principles of a fair trial, a hearing which Jabarin also could not attend because of his confinement to the West Bank, the panel of three judges once again revealed its impotence in the face of absurdly unsupportable "security" concerns. After dismissing everyone from the courtroom except for the Israeli government lawyer and a representative of the Israeli General Security Service (GSS), which presented evidence that was never disclosed to Jabarin or his lawyers, the judges decided to maintain his travel ban. The cryptic ruling of the court mentioned that:"[T]he fact cannot be ignored that the West Bank is a closed military zone, entry and exit from which require a permit. The right to freedom of movement is examined in view of [Israel's] special legislation for the area. ... The material pointing to Jabarin's involvement in the activity of terrorist entities is concrete and reliable material. No permission to leave the country is no punishment for his forbidden activities but due to relevant security considerations."Minister Verhagen commented in an official press release that "It is disappointing, and disquieting, that [Jabarin] has been denied the opportunity to receive the Geuzen Medal." Verhagen was publicly critical of the fact that the Israeli court's judgment of the GSS that Jabarin is or was a member of a terrorist organization was based on evidence to which Jabarin and his legal team had no access.Although Jabarin was unable to receive the Geuzenpenning award in person, he did participate in the ceremony by way of a video link with Ramallah. In a response to the decision by the Israeli high court to uphold the GSS travel ban, Al-Haq replied through a press release issued on 11 March: "Once again, the Israeli judiciary demonstrates its subservience to the military and security authorities."Israel's treatment of human rights defenders like Jabarin recall Archbishop Desmond Tutu's protest of "the whole phalanx of draconian laws such as the security legislation" that violated the rights of those who rejected apartheid in South Africa. During the South African apartheid regime, persons considered by the Minister of Law and Order a threat to the security of the state were indefinitely detained in solitary confinement, with no contact with their family or a lawyer. Additionally, persons were placed under travel ban orders arbitrarily and the evidence "justifying" the orders not tested in an open court.'

Well, I was more interested in some legal analysis of the possibilitiesfor trials and prosecution for the alleged criminals in the IDFconnected with the operation in Gaza than the story of Jenin seven yearsago. I don't think one could compare the Gaza war to the operation in Jenin.

But since Jenin is mentioned, we can talk about that as well. I have toadmit that I am at an immediate disadvantage when it comes to questionsabout Israel and Palestine because I have never been there. Therefore,my knowledge is based only on what I have read. I have used some of theday to refresh what I remember about Jenin and read up. What I doremember was that there was claims of massacres where the IDF allegedlyhad killed thousands of Palestinians and buried them alive under theirhouses. As far as I can see, there was no massive air assault on Jenin,and it was a regular military operation against militant terrorists.According to the UN, there were 52 Palestinians and 23 IDF soldierskilled these days, nothing close to any massacre. Accordning toWikipedia, no more than 26 and maybe as little as five civilians werekilled during Operation Defensive Shield,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jenin. Does anyone else haveother numbers?

For more about the IDF operation in Jenin, it could also be useful towatch The Road to Jenin, a movie by Pierre Rehov,http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3079049095214906504. Here wesee Bassem Eid, the founder and director of the Palestinian Human RightsMonitoring Group (http://www.phrmg.org/ ), a non-partisan organization dedicatedto exposing human rights violations and supporting a democratic andpluralistic Palestine. He is warning that media can make the conflictmuch harder than it is.

cheers

k

Ana Valdés wrote:

> The problem is not as easy, dear Kristian. The IDF call itself the "mostmoral army in the world" and if it wants live up to their rethoric they mustbe much better than any other army.I was in Jenin in April 2002, the same day the IDF left the city after tendays closure, where the people were not allowed to show themselves in thestreets, they didn't have any fresh water or any more food than they had inthe houses. I am speaking about a 75.000 people's city, not a village.In every house in the middle of the town was a hole digged by the soldiersor made with a bulldozzer or by bombing the houses with Apache helicopters.In the houses where the army itself occupied the pans and the kitchen bowlswere used as toilets and urine and fecales were everywhere.In the bedrooms it were graffittis in hebrew with the inscriptions :"wedon't want your rotten kids, you are the devil's pawns".It was desecration in every shrine, in every mosque, in every house.

(The most people in Jenin were civilians, old women and kids, old men, theyoung fled to the hills around or hided themselves in tunnels and cellars,the "resistance" in Jenin were some hundred guys armed with homemade bobbytraps and personal guns. Against them the IDF, one of the world's mostpowerful armies.

Ana

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Kristian Kahrs wrote:

In theory, this is very simple. The guilty ones have to be arrested andprosecuted. There seems to be a lot of rotten eggs in the IDF. What doesit mean when the IDF is opening a criminal inquiry? Does anyone knowwhat the relaxed rules of engagement involve concretely?

JERUSALEM (AP) -- An increasingly disturbing picture of the Israeliarmy's conduct in the Gaza war emerged Friday, as new witness accountsfrom Israeli troops described wanton vandalism to Palestinian homes,humiliation of civilians and loose rules of engagement that resulted inunnecessary civilian deaths.

The revelations of soldier conduct over the past two days have set offsoul-searching and alarm in a country where the military is widelyrevered. They also have echoed Palestinian allegations that Israel'sassault did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, at a timewhen some international human rights groups contend Israel violated thelaws of war.

Israel launched the offensive on Dec. 27 in what it said was an effortto end years of Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza. The PalestinianCenter for Human Rights, which conducted a survey of casualties, says atotal of 1,417 people were killed, including 926 civilians during the22-day offensive.

Israel has disputed the findings, saying the most of the dead werelegitimate targets, but it offered no evidence. Thirteen Israelis alsodied in the fighting.

The Israeli government has insisted it did all it could to preventcivilian casualties, but on Thursday, the army ordered a criminalinquiry into its own soldiers' reports that some troops killedcivilians, including children, by hastily opening fire, confident thatthe relaxed rules of engagement would protect them.

The inquiry was based on postwar testimony from a gathering of soldiersinvolved in the offensive, published in a military institute'snewsletter and leaked to two Israeli newspapers. The Haaretz dailypublished additional details Friday, and the transcript of the sessionwas obtained by The Associated Press.

According to one account, an Israeli sniper killed a Palestinian womanand her two children after they misunderstood another soldier's orderand turned the wrong way. The sniper was not told the civilians had beenreleased from the house and, in compliance with standing orders, openedfire when they approached him.

In another account, an elderly woman was shot dead while walking on aroad. The soldier who described the incident, identified only as "Aviv,"said it was not clear whether the woman was a threat.

"From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in coldblood," Aviv said, according to the transcript. "The order was to takethat woman out, the moment you see her."

Aviv said in one instance, his unit was sent to take over a house bybursting in, going up floor by floor and shooting anyone they saw.

"I call this murder," he said. "From above they said it was permissible,because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was ineffect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled."

In the end, he said he managed to change the order so residents would begiven five minutes to leave their homes, drawing protests from othersoldiers. "Anyone who's in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact,"he quoted another soldier as saying.

Aviv said he felt an attitude among soldiers that "inside Gaza you areallowed to do anything you want, to break down doors of houses for noreason other than that it's cool."

"To write 'Death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures andspit on them, just because you can," he said.

The army said Friday it had no additional comment beyond Thursday'sannouncement of the inquiry. During the fighting, the militaryacknowledged loosening the rules of engagement, aiming to reducecasualties among Israeli troops.

Another soldier, Ram, described what appeared to be a rift betweensecular and religious soldiers.

"What I do remember in particular at the beginning is the feeling of analmost religious mission," he said. He described a "huge gap" betweenbackground material provided by the army's education corps, andreligious material distributed by the army's rabbinate.

"Their message was very clear: 'We are the Jewish people, we came tothis land by a miracle. God brought us back to this land, and now weneed to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with ourconquest of this holy land,'" he said.

Earlier this year, the military "severely reprimanded" an officer fordistributing a religious booklet urging soldiers to show no mercy totheir enemies. The army said the booklet was based on the writings of anultranationalist rabbi and that the chief military rabbi had notapproved it.

The published accounts revealed debate and soul-searching among thesoldiers. Discussing the death of the old woman, one soldier, Zvi, saidthe shooting could be understood in the context of the battle zone."Logic says she should be there," he said. "It's known that they havelookouts and that sort of thing."

And Yossi said his unit was forced to clean up a home it had occupied onthe same day that a Palestinian rocket wounded a mother and baby in anIsraeli city. He said soldiers were unhappy, but complied.

"In the end I was convinced, and realized it was the right thing to do,"he said.

Danny Zamir, the head of the institute, called the discussion"instructive," but also "dismaying and depressing."

"You are describing an army with very low norms of value," he said.

The heavy Palestinian civilian casualties and widespread destructionduring the three-week war provoked international outcry against Israel, which halted its fire on Jan. 18.'

A man looks at a cross set up for a soldier killed in Iraq. The cross is set up every Sunday at the beach in Santa Monica by Veterans for Peace as part of what they call "Arlington West." (Photo: Margaret Molloy Photography) Six years ago, the United States of America began the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since then, 4,259 American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more have been wounded. There is no accurate accounting of Iraqi dead and wounded, because as we were told, we do not do body counts. Because the Bush administration left its Iraq expenditures off the budget, and because of the tremendous amount of war-profiteering, graft and theft that has been involved, we do not know exactly how much we have spent. For the record, 2,192 days later, this is how we got here: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, Vice President Speech to VFW National Convention 8/26/2002 "There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Response to Question From the Press 9/6/2002 "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." - Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser CNN Late Edition 9/8/2002 "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." - George W. Bush, President Speech to the UN General Assembly 9/12/2002 "Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have." - George W. Bush, President Radio Address 10/5/2002 "The Iraqi regime ... possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas." - George W. Bush, President Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech 10/7/2002 "And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons." - George W. Bush, President Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech 10/7/2002 "After 11 years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon." - George W. Bush, President Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech 10/7/2002 "We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas." - George W. Bush, President Cincinnati, Ohio, Speech 10/7/2002 "Iraq, despite UN sanctions, maintains an aggressive program to rebuild the infrastructure for its nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs. In each instance, Iraq's procurement agents are actively working to obtain both weapons-specific and dual-use materials and technologies critical to their rebuilding and expansion efforts, using front companies and whatever illicit means are at hand." - John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Speech to the Hudson Institute 11/1/2002 "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists ... The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction." - Dick Cheney, Vice President Denver, Address to the Air National Guard 12/1/2002 "If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 12/2/2002 "The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Response to Question From the Press 12/4/2002 "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 1/9/2003 "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." - George W. Bush, President State of the Union Address 1/28/2003 "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." - George W. Bush, President State of the Union Address 1/28/2003 "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Remarks to the UN Security Council 2/5/2003 "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Address to the UN Security Council 2/5/2003 "In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world - and we will not allow it." - George W. Bush, President Speech to the American Enterprise Institute 2/26/2003 "If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us ... But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Interview With Radio France International 2/28/2003 "So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Remarks to the UN Security Council 3/7/2003 "Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." - Dick Cheney, Vice President "Meet the Press" 3/16/2003 "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George W. Bush, President Address to the Nation 3/17/2003 "Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 3/21/2003 "One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites." - Victoria Clark, Pentagon Spokeswoman Press Briefing 3/22/2003 "I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction." - Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board Member Washington Post, p. A27 3/23/2003 "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense ABC Interview 3/30/2003 "We still need to find and secure Iraq's weapons of mass destruction facilities and secure Iraq's borders so we can prevent the flow of weapons of mass destruction materials and senior regime officials out of the country." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Press Conference 4/9/2003 "You bet we're concerned about it. And one of the reasons it's important is because the nexus between terrorist states with weapons of mass destruction ... and terrorist groups - networks - is a critical link. And the thought that ... some of those materials could leave the country and in the hands of terrorist networks would be a very unhappy prospect. So it is important to us to see that that doesn't happen." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Press Conference 4/9/2003 "I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 4/10/2003 "But make no mistake - as I said earlier - we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 4/10/2003 "Were not going to find anything until we find people who tell us where the things are. And we have that very high on our priority list, to find the people who know. And when we do, then well learn precisely where things were and what was done." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense "Meet the Press" 4/13/2003 "We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them." - George W. Bush, President NBC Interview 4/24/2003 "There are people who in large measure have information that we need ... so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Press Briefing 4/25/2003 "We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so." - George W. Bush, President Remarks to Reporters 5/3/2003 "I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Remarks to Reporters 5/4/2003 "We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Fox News Interview 5/4/2003 "I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein - because he had a weapons program." - George W. Bush, President Remarks to Reporters 5/6/2003 "U.S. officials never expected that 'we were going to open garages and find' weapons of mass destruction." - Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser Reuters Interview 5/12/2003 "We said all along that we will never get to the bottom of the Iraqi WMD program simply by going and searching specific sites, that you'd have to be able to get people who know about the programs to talk to you." - Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense Interview With Australian Broadcasting 5/13/2003 "It's going to take time to find them, but we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth. One thing is for certain: Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction." - George W. Bush, President Speech at a Weapons Factory in Ohio 5/25/2003 "They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations 5/27/2003 "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." - Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense Vanity Fair Interview 5/28/2003 "The President is indeed satisfied with the intelligence that he received. And I think that's borne out by the fact that, just as Secretary Powell described at the United Nations, we have found the bio trucks that can be used only for the purpose of producing biological weapons. That's proof-perfect that the intelligence in that regard was right on target." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 5/29/2003 "We have teams of people that are out looking. They've investigated a number of sites. And within the last week or two, they have in fact captured and have in custody two of the mobile trailers that Secretary Powell talked about at the United Nations as being biological weapons laboratories." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Infinity Radio Interview 5/30/2003 "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." - George W. Bush, President Interview With TVP Poland 5/30/2003 "You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons ... They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two ... And we'll find more weapons as time goes on." - George W. Bush, President Press Briefing 5/30/2003 "This wasn't material I was making up, it came from the intelligence community." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Press Briefing 6/2/2003 "We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. This is the man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder. He knew the inspectors were looking for them. You know better than me he's got a big country in which to hide them. We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth." - George W. Bush, President Camp Sayliya, Qatar 6/5/2003 "I would put before you Exhibit A, the mobile biological labs that we have found. People are saying, 'Well, are they truly mobile biological labs?' Yes, they are. And the DCI, George Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, stands behind that assessment." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Fox News Interview 6/8/2003 "No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were, where they were stored." - Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Adviser "Meet the Press" 6/8/2003 "What the president has said is because it's been the long-standing view of numerous people, not only in this country, not only in this administration, but around the world, including at the United Nations, who came to those conclusions ... And the president is not going to engage in the rewriting of history that others may be trying to engage in." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Response to Question From the Press 6/9/2003 "Iraq had a weapons program ... Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program." - George W. Bush, President Comment to Reporters 6/9/2003 "The biological weapons labs that we believe strongly are biological weapons labs, we didn't find any biological weapons with those labs. But should that give us any comfort? Not at all. Those were labs that could produce biological weapons whenever Saddam Hussein might have wanted to have a biological weapons inventory." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State Associated Press Interview 6/12/2003 "My personal view is that their intelligence has been, I'm sure, imperfect, but good. In other words, I think the intelligence was correct in general, and that you always will find out precisely what it was once you get on the ground and have a chance to talk to people and explore it, and I think that will happen." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Press Briefing 6/18/2003 "I have reason, every reason, to believe that the intelligence that we were operating off was correct and that we will, in fact, find weapons or evidence of weapons, programs, that are conclusive. But that's just a matter of time ... It's now less than eight weeks since the end of major combat in Iraq and I believe that patience will prove to be a virtue." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense Pentagon Media Briefing 6/24/2003 MS. BLOCK: There were no toxins found in those trailers. SECRETARY POWELL: Which could mean one of several things: one, they hadn't been used yet to develop toxins; or, secondly, they had been sterilized so thoroughly that there is no residual left. It may well be that they hadn't been used yet. - Colin Powell, Secretary of State "All Things Considered" Interview 6/27/2003 "That was the concern we had with Saddam Hussein. Not only did he have weapons - and we'll uncover not only his weapons but all of his weapons programs - he never lost the intent to have these kinds of weapons." - Colin Powell, Secretary of State "All Things Considered" Interview 6/27/2003 "I think the burden is on those people who think he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are." - Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary Press Briefing 7/9/2003

'Miami HeraldMarch 20, 2009Israeli soldiers say army rabbis framed Gaza offensive as religious warAs investigations continue into the killing of Palestinian civilians during the Israeli military's latest incursion, testimony has surfaced that troops were told their actions amounted to `a religious mission.'BY CLIFF CHURGINMcClatchy News ServiceJERUSALEM -- Rabbis affiliated with the Israeli army urged troops heading into Gaza to reclaim what they said was God-given land and "get rid of the gentiles" -- effectively turning the 22-day Israeli intervention into a religious war, according to the testimony of a soldier who fought in Gaza.Literature passed out to soldiers by the army's rabbinate "had a clear message: We are the people of Israel, we came by a miracle to the land of Israel, God returned us to the land, now we need to struggle to get rid of the gentiles that are interfering with our conquest of the land," the soldier told a forum of Gaza veterans in mid-February, just weeks after the conflict ended.A transcript of the testimony given at an Israeli military academy at the Oranim college on Feb. 13 was obtained Friday by McClatchy Newspapers and also published in Haaretz, one of Israel's leading dailies. The soldier, identified as "'Ram," a pseudonym to protect his identity, gave a scathing description of the atmosphere as the Israeli army went to war."The general atmosphere among people I spoke to was ... the lives of Palestinians are ... let's say far, far less important than the lives of our soldiers," Ram said. The religious literature gave "the feeling of almost a religious mission," he said.Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, the Israeli army's chief prosecutor, on Thursday announced the first criminal investigation into the killing of Palestinian civilians during Israel's military incursion.He issued the order after the Haaretz and Maariv newspapers published an account from the Oranim forum of how an Israeli sharpshooter killed a Palestinian woman and her two children when they inadvertently took a wrong turn after being released from detention in their own home.There are growing questions about the Israeli Defense Force's commitment to prosecute war crimes and burgeoning criticism of the operation itself.According to Haaretz, the army first learned on Feb. 23 of the Oranim forum allegations and obtained a full transcript on March 5. The army told McClatchy on Thursday that it had received the transcript that day, but on Friday a representative said it had received the document "a few days ago."Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the operation, more than half of them civilians, according to Palestinian human rights groups.SOLDIERS' TESTIMONIESDanny Zamir, the head of the Yitzhak Rabin military academy, which organized the soldiers' forum, said the Gaza operation was "an unusual military action in the IDF's history that established a new, unknown norm in the IDF's ethical code."The testimonies indicated that the army, despite repeated claims that it was protecting civilian lives, was not instructing its troops to that effect.One soldier, identified only as "Aviv," said he was bothered by open-fire orders given to his unit for an operation that was later canceled."We were supposed to go in with an armored vehicle called an Ahzarit, break into the door and start to shoot inside and simply go up floor by floor. ... I call this murder ... to go up floor by floor and every person that we see we were to shoot," he said. "Aviv" served as a squad leader with the Givati unit in the Gaza neighborhood of Zeitoun."At first I said to myself, `How is this logical?' Higher authorities said this was permissible because everyone left in the area and in the city of Gaza is condemned, is a terrorist, because they didn't run away."

'The late Israeli scientist/philosopher and moral authority (by Zionist standards, that is) among Jewish Israelis , Yesha'yahu Leibovitch, coined the term "Judeo-Nazis" to describe how Israeli soldiers, and society at large, treat Palestinians under occupation, which he blamed for corrupting "Jewish souls." Leibovitch predicted that a "Nazification" of Israeli society due to the occupation will lead to eventually establishing concentration camps for the Palestinians. He foresaw Gaza.

I have mentioned this numerous times in a number of public speaking presentations, but I shall repeat it here for the record: Jewish-Israeli society is now ready for a full fledged Holocaust against the indigenous Palestinians. Mentally, socially, politically, militarily, it is ready. The only thing preventing it is the absolute belief by Israelis that they cannot survive afterwards, that they cannot get away with it.

Ilan Pappe wrote years ago that there are no moral considerations preventing Israelis from committing a full-fledged ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians; only fear of a harsh Western reaction stops them. I would take this further today and say, there is nothing preventing Israelis from supporting, cheering and justifying a German-style Holocaust against us except fear from repercussions that have every potential of ending Israel's very existence as a state. Geopolitically, it is not possible today for Israel to commit even a Rwanda-style genocide against the Palestinians and get away with it.

There is another factor that is no less important: why invite the wrath of the world by committing outright genocide, killing tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as many Israeli politicians (including the "dovish" Labor leader, Barak) have publicly advocated over the years, when you can get away with far less condemnation by killing us slowly, gradually, choking us to death, doing everything possible to increase the incidence of deadly diseases among us (particularly cancer), and stunting the growth and development of a whole generation of our children, enough to guarantee shorter life expectancy? This is the 21st century, evolved type of genocide. Just as Israel's apartheid is far more sophisticated than the "primitive," literally black and white, South African type, Israel's genocide is much smarter than that of the Germans. It is genocide nonetheless, by any objective standards of international law.

If anyone still has doubts, please read the below and the emerging testimonies of Israeli soldiers who participated in the Gaza massacre. As a reminder, unlike the US army in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israeli army is still a "people's army," relatively speaking, drawing its soldiers from virtually all sectors of Israeli society, particularly in its reserve units. As has been argued by many before me, the Israeli army is the most accurate, representative microcosm of Israeli society. It is Israel, redux. It represents Israel far more than Lieberman does. Actually, in comparison with the below sentiments in soliders' testimonies, poor Lieberman looks liberal!

Academics, dancers, intellectuals, judges, accountants, scientists, musicians, sociologists, philosophers, workers, farmers, kibbutzniks, Tel Aviv hedonistic hippies, among others, ALL duly serve in the army, participate in the horrors you can read a sample of below, and go back to their daily lives as "normal" human beings.

And they all shout: don't boycott us; help us reach peace!

The only peace the huge majority of Jewish Israelis are seeking right now is not the "peace of the brave," whatever that utterly meaningless and deceptive phrase repeated by Rabin and Arafat for years means, but the peace of the grave, our collective grave.

This makes us appreciate even more the heroic efforts of the few, anti-Zionist Jewish Israelis who are fighting against this fascism from within -- many of whom are also calling with us for BDS.

Excerpt from the article:

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."Omar Barghouti

PS: I have to rub in this one: those McCarthyist Canadian university administrations who banned the famous Israeli Apartheid Week poster (by Brazilian cartoonist, Lattouf), depicting an Israeli helicopter aiming a missile at a Palestinian child carrying a teddy-bear, owe us all a huge apology! That poster was too mild!!'

The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.

In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.

The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.

"It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town," he explains. "The text was very powerful. The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him."

Does the design go to the commanders for approval?

The Givati soldier: "Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant. We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average."

What do you think of the slogan that was printed?

"I didn't like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it."

Many controversial shirts have been ordered by graduates of snipers courses, which bring together soldiers from various units. In 2006, soldiers from the "Carmon Team" course for elite-unit marksmen printed a shirt with a drawing of a knife-wielding Palestinian in the crosshairs of a gun sight, and the slogan, "You've got to run fast, run fast, run fast, before it's all over." Below is a drawing of Arab women weeping over a grave and the words: "And afterward they cry, and afterward they cry." [The inscriptions are riffs on a popular song.] Another sniper's shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, "Everything is with the best of intentions."

G., a soldier in an elite unit who has done a snipers course, explained that, "it's a type of bonding process, and also it's well known that anyone who is a sniper is messed up in the head. Our shirts have a lot of double entendres, for example: 'Bad people with good aims.' Every group that finishes a course puts out stuff like that."

When are these shirts worn?

G. "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out. Sometimes people will ask you what it's about."

Of the shirt depicting a bull's-eye on a pregnant woman, he said: "There are people who think it's not right, and I think so as well, but it doesn't really mean anything. I mean it's not like someone is gonna go and shoot a pregnant woman."

What is the idea behind the shirt from July 2007, which has an image of a child with the slogan "Smaller - harder!"?

"It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally, and also the target is smaller."

Do your superiors approve the shirts before printing?

"Yes, although one time they rejected some shirt that was too extreme. I don't remember what was on it."

These shirts also seem pretty extreme. Why draw crosshairs over a child - do you shoot kids?

'We came, we saw'

"As a sniper, you get a lot of extreme situations. You suddenly see a small boy who picks up a weapon and it's up to you to decide whether to shoot. These shirts are half-facetious, bordering on the truth, and they reflect the extreme situations you might encounter. The one who-honest-to-God sees the target with his own eyes - that's the sniper."

Have you encountered a situation like that?

"Fortunately, not involving a kid, but involving a woman - yes. There was someone who wasn't holding a weapon, but she was near a prohibited area and could have posed a threat."

What did you do?

"I didn't take it" (i.e., shoot).

You don't regret that, I imagine.

"No. Whomever I had to shoot, I shot."

A shirt printed up just this week for soldiers of the Lavi battalion, who spent three years in the West Bank, reads: "We came, we saw, we destroyed!" - alongside images of weapons, an angry soldier and a Palestinian village with a ruined mosque in the center.

A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: "If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!"

Y., a soldier/yeshiva student, designed the shirt. "You take whoever [in the unit] knows how to draw and then you give it to the commanders before printing," he explained.

What is the soldier holding in his hand?

Y. "A mosque. Before I drew the shirt I had some misgivings, because I wanted it to be like King Kong, but not too monstrous. The one holding the mosque - I wanted him to have a more normal-looking face, so it wouldn't look like an anti-Semitic cartoon. Some of the people who saw it told me, 'Is that what you've got to show for the IDF? That it destroys homes?' I can understand people who look at this from outside and see it that way, but I was in Gaza and they kept emphasizing that the object of the operation was to wreak destruction on the infrastructure, so that the price the Palestinians and the leadership pay will make them realize that it isn't worth it for them to go on shooting. So that's the idea of 'we're coming to destroy' in the drawing."

According to Y., most of these shirts are worn strictly in an army context, not in civilian life. "And within the army people look at it differently," he added. "I don't think I would walk down the street in this shirt, because it would draw fire. Even at my yeshiva I don't think people would like it."

Y. also came up with a design for the shirt his unit printed at the end of basic training. It shows a clenched fist shattering the symbol of the Paratroops Corps.

Where does the fist come from?

"It's reminiscent of [Rabbi Meir] Kahane's symbol. I borrowed it from an emblem for something in Russia, but basically it's supposed to look like Kahane's symbol, the one from 'Kahane Was Right' - it's a sort of joke. Our company commander is kind of gung-ho."

One of the soldiers in the platoon downplays it: "It doesn't mean much, it's just a T-shirt from our platoon. It's not a big deal. A friend of mine drew a picture and we made it into a shirt."

What's the idea behind "Only God forgives"?

The soldier: "It's just a saying."

No one had a problem with the fact that a mosque gets blown up in the picture?

"I don't see what you're getting at. I don't like the way you're going with this. Don't take this somewhere you're not supposed to, as though we hate Arabs."

After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas' prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied by a particularly graphic slogan. S., a soldier in the platoon that ordered the shirt, said the idea came from a similar shirt, printed after the Second Lebanon War, that featured Hassan Nasrallah instead of Haniyeh.

"They don't okay things like that at the company level. It's a shirt we put out just for the platoon," S. explained.

What's the problem with this shirt?

S.: "It bothers some people to see these things, from a religious standpoint ..."

How did people who saw it respond?

"We don't have that many Orthodox people in the platoon, so it wasn't a problem. It's just something the guys want to put out. It's more for wearing around the house, and not within the companies, because it bothers people. The Orthodox mainly. The officers tell us it's best not to wear shirts like this on the base."

The sketches printed in recent years at the Adiv factory, one of the largest of its kind in the country, are arranged in drawers according to the names of the units placing the orders: Paratroops, Golani, air force, sharpshooters and so on. Each drawer contains hundreds of drawings, filed by year. Many of the prints are cartoons and slogans relating to life in the unit, or inside jokes that outsiders wouldn't get (and might not care to, either), but a handful reflect particular aggressiveness, violence and vulgarity.

Print-shop manager Haim Yisrael, who has worked there since the early 1980s, said Adiv prints around 1,000 different patterns each month, with soldiers accounting for about half. Yisrael recalled that when he started out, there were hardly any orders from the army.

"The first ones to do it were from the Nahal brigade," he said. "Later on other infantry units started printing up shirts, and nowadays any course with 15 participants prints up shirts."

From time to time, officers complain. "Sometimes the soldiers do things that are inside jokes that only they get, and sometimes they do something foolish that they take to an extreme," Yisrael explained. "There have been a few times when commanding officers called and said, 'How can you print things like that for soldiers?' For example, with shirts that trashed the Arabs too much. I told them it's a private company, and I'm not interested in the content. I can print whatever I like. We're neutral. There have always been some more extreme and some less so. It's just that now more people are making shirts."

Race to be unique

Evyatar Ben-Tzedef, a research associate at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism and former editor of the IDF publication Maarachot, said the phenomenon of custom-made T-shirts is a product of "the infantry's insane race to be unique. I, for example, had only one shirt that I received after the Yom Kippur War. It said on it, 'The School for Officers,' and that was it. What happened since then is a product of the decision to assign every unit an emblem and a beret. After all, there used to be very few berets: black, red or green. This changed in the 1990s. [The shirts] developed because of the fact that for bonding purposes, each unit created something that was unique to it.

"These days the content on shirts is sometimes deplorable," Ben-Tzedef explained. "It stems from the fact that profanity is very acceptable and normative in Israel, and that there is a lack of respect for human beings and their environment, which includes racism aimed in every direction."

Yossi Kaufman, who moderates the army and defense forum on the Web site Fresh, served in the Armored Corps from 1996 to 1999. "I also drew shirts, and I remember the first one," he said. "It had a small emblem on the front and some inside joke, like, 'When we die, we'll go to heaven, because we've already been through hell.'"

Kaufman has also been exposed to T-shirts of the sort described here. "I know there are shirts like these," he says. "I've heard and also seen a little. These are not shirts that soldiers can wear in civilian life, because they would get stoned, nor at a battalion get-together, because the battalion commander would be pissed off. They wear them on very rare occasions. There's all sorts of black humor stuff, mainly from snipers, such as, 'Don't bother running because you'll die tired' - with a drawing of a Palestinian boy, not a terrorist. There's a Golani or Givati shirt of a soldier raping a girl, and underneath it says, 'No virgins, no terror attacks.' I laughed, but it was pretty awful. When I was asked once to draw things like that, I said it wasn't appropriate."

The IDF Spokesman's Office comments on the phenomenon: "Military regulations do not apply to civilian clothing, including shirts produced at the end of basic training and various courses. The designs are printed at the soldiers' private initiative, and on civilian shirts. The examples raised by Haaretz are not in keeping with the values of the IDF spirit, not representative of IDF life, and are in poor taste. Humor of this kind deserves every condemnation and excoriation. The IDF intends to take action for the immediate eradication of this phenomenon. To this end, it is emphasizing to commanding officers that it is appropriate, among other things, to take discretionary and disciplinary measures against those involved in acts of this sort."

Shlomo Tzipori, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and a lawyer specializing in martial law, said the army does bring soldiers up on charges for offenses that occur outside the base and during their free time. According to Tzipori, slogans that constitute an "insult to the army or to those in uniform" are grounds for court-martial, on charges of "shameful conduct" or "disciplinary infraction," which are general clauses in judicial martial law.

Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward.

"This tendency is most strikingly evident among soldiers who encounter various situations in the territories on a daily basis. There is less meticulousness than in the past, and increasing callousness. There is a perception that the Palestinian is not a person, a human being entitled to basic rights, and therefore anything may be done to him."

Could the printing of clothing be viewed also as a means of venting aggression?

Sasson-Levy: "No. I think it strengthens and stimulates aggression and legitimizes it. What disturbs me is that a shirt is something that has permanence. The soldiers later wear it in civilian life; their girlfriends wear it afterward. It is not a statement, but rather something physical that remains, that is out there in the world. Beyond that, I think the link made between sexist views and nationalist views, as in the 'Screw Haniyeh' shirt, is interesting. National chauvinism and gender chauvinism combine and strengthen one another. It establishes a masculinity shaped by violent aggression toward women and Arabs; a masculinity that considers it legitimate to speak in a crude and violent manner toward women and Arabs."

Col. (res.) Ron Levy began his military service in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando force before the Six-Day War. He was the IDF's chief psychologist, and headed the army's mental health department in the 1980s.

Levy: "I'm familiar with things of this sort going back 40, 50 years, and each time they take a different form. Psychologically speaking, this is one of the ways in which soldiers project their anger, frustration and violence. It is a certain expression of things, which I call 'below the belt.'"

Do you think this a good way to vent anger?

Levy: "It's safe. But there are also things here that deviate from the norm, and you could say that whoever is creating these things has reached some level of normality. He gives expression to the fact that what is considered abnormal today might no longer be so tomorrow."

'Testimonies from Israeli army soliders who participated in the recent aggression on Gaza paint a horrific picture of deliberate killings, sometimes en masse, of Palestinian civilians and wanton destruction of property and agricultural plots, without any "security" justification.

The full testimonies are coming out shortly.

From shooting mothers and small children, even after clearly identifying them as such, to wholesale executions of surrendering families, with their children, Israeli soldiers were following orders that set very loose "rules of engagement," thereby allowing such war crimes with impunity.

And one must not forget the fact that, in this particular war of aggression, fundamentalist Zionist rabbis enjoyed much more influence over the troops, having a free hand to indoctrinate them with fascist interpretations of Jewish Law, or Halacha, that reduce gentiles (non-Jews) to the status of animals and enjoins killing them, including their civilians, in what is considered a war of necessity (basically, all Israeli wars are, by definition, "of necessity," even as seen by the "ultra-left" of Zionism, Meretz and the Peace Now movement).

This mix of extreme Zionist racism with fanatic Jewish fundamentalism is now being further exposed as poisoning the minds and souls of young, impressionable Jewish-Israeli settler-colonists, turning them into efficient killing machines with virtually no moral compass when dealing with "creatures" they perceive as relative humans.

Given the rise of the fascist right to power in Israel, with its open agenda advocating ethnic cleansing and genocide, no one can take the above lightly.

Excerpts from article below:

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear today and tomorrow in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

The head of the pe-military course, Danny Zamir, told Haaretz yesterday that he did not know in advance what the soldiers would say at the gathering, and what they said "shocked us." He said that after hearing the soldiers, he told IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi about his fears of a serious moral failure in the IDF.

The chief of staff's bureau requested a copy of the transcript of the discussion, and Zamir provided it. This week Zamir met with the IDF's chief education officer, Brig. Gen. Eli Shermeister, to discuss the matter. Zamir said he believed the army would take the matter seriously. "They do not intend to avoid responsibility," he said.

The IDF Spokesman's Office said: "As a result of the request of the head of the Rabin pre-military course, Mr. Danny Zamir, to the chief of staff's bureau, a meeting was held between Zamir and the chief education officer, Brig. Gen. Eli Shermeister. The chief education officer described to the head of the preparatory course the processes of the operational and ethical inquiries being conducted by the IDF and the chief education officer's staff at all levels."

The chief education officer also described "the actions taken before during and after the operation to inculcate the soldiers and commanders with the moral aspects of the fighting."

The spokesman said that "Brig. Gen. Shermeister also made it clear that the IDF is now conducting intensive and comprehensive inquiries, and that commanders are encouraging discussion of these matters. The IDF has no supporting or prior information about these events. The IDF will check their veracity and investigate as required. The head of the preparatory course was also asked to pass on to the IDF any information he has so we can deal with it and investigate it in depth."'

Striking testimony has emerged from Israeli soldiers involved in the Gaza war in which they describe shooting unarmed civilians, sometimes under orders from their officers.

One soldier described how an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian mother and her two children, adding that fellow troops believed the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers".

The testimony, published in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz today, gives a rare insight into how Israeli soldiers fought the war on the ground; reinforces Palestinian accounts of disproportionate Israeli force; and sharply contradicts the Israeli military's official version of events.

The accounts come from unnamed soldiers who were graduates of a pre-military course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon and who spoke in a session in mid-February. The transcript of the session was published this week and obtained by Ha'aretz.

In that transcript, one infantry squad leader said: "There was a house with a family inside Š We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was OK, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders. The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them."

The squad leader said he believed the sniper did not feel regret. "I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it ... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way."

A second squad leader, from the same brigade, described how a company commander ordered troops to shoot an elderly Palestinian woman who was walking on a road about 100 metres from a house the soldiers had taken over. He said he argued with his commander about the rules of engagement, particularly the way they shot without warning to clear houses.

Ha'aretz reported: "After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that 'We should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.'"

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: to understand how much the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

The head of the Oranim course was apparently "shocked" after hearing the soldiers' accounts of their fighting and reported his concerns to the army chief, Major General Gabi Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi's office asked for a transcript of the discussion, which was provided.

The Israeli military today first denied having "any previous knowledge or information about these incidents". Then in a later statement it admitted that the head of the course had sent a letter to the chief of staff's office "several weeks ago" describing the soldiers' accounts and that the military's chief education officer then met with the course head.

It said the military advocate general, Brigadier General Avichai Mendelblit, today instructed the military police to investigate the soldiers' accounts.